Leaderboard

Things are getting exciting again. Plan is to reverse some of the things I did when it was a dedicated track car and to get it back on the road. 1. Found all the old pics on an old HDD so I can fix the thread of broken images and tidy it up. 2. Lots of changes havent really kept up to date with. 3. New engine almost ready.

The rattle coming from the driver's side front brake has been resolved. Thanks to @Eagle for the assist. have always been nervous about brake work. The brakes were removed and the pads were checked, all were looking good we added some stop squeal on reinstallation, just to be sure. I also resecured the dust shield, the lower pin and clip were quite loose and the only way to properly tighten is to remove the disc itself to gain access.

The Car: For this project the relevant parts are that it's an E46 with Nissan VQ37 engine swap (running OEM ECM) and Alpine head unit. I need to interface with both of these things with the steering wheel controls, and neither of them speak BMW. The Plan: Make custom PCB's to replace the OEM units which will interface natively with the headunit and ECM respectively. Complete OEM look and feel but otherwise totally bespoke. Will likely use an Arduino for the radio controls, hopefully I can stash this some place well out of the way. It turns out the Alpine (and other brands I believe) use the same signals as the IR remote sends but simply over the wired interface. As for the Nissan cruise control settings, they are based on a resistance ladder which is documented in the service manual. So the cruise functionality (actually used for changing maps in the ECM) will be all passive and the radio will be a little more involved. So Far: Have taken the OEM items out of the wheel so I can replicate the PCB's physical layout including fixed items like switch pads + lights.

Dropped it in at SB European on Monday, the owner was very friendly/knowledgeable and workshop was nice and clean.... pick it up tomorrow. Fingers crossed, but so far so good.